The Life and Reign of Edward I.

by Robert Benton Seeley

A controversy had existed between England and Scotland for centuries before Edward was born. Various kings of England had received the homage alike of the princes of Wales and of the kings of Scotland. We have seen that when Edward was to be crowned, his brother‐in‐law, Alexander of Scotland, came to Westminster and paid his homage; while Llewellyn of Wales, not denying his liability, tried to evade that ceremony by various excuses.

But two different meanings were attached in England and Scotland to this fealty due from the Scottish king. The English lawyers and statesmen always maintained that it was due to the king of England for the realm of Scotland. The Scots, on the other hand, insisted on another view—that the king of Scotland owed homage for the honour or earldom of Huntingdon, a possession held by him within the realm of England; but that for Scotland itself he owed no fealty, and ought not to come under any obligation. This quarrel, or difference of opinion, had existed for two or three hundred years. It came to the surface at Edward’s coronation, when his brother‐in‐law, the king of Scotland, appeared at Westminster in great state to pay his homage. He came attended by a hundred knights, and, as we have already narrated, “each knight, as he dismounted from his horse, cast the steed loose, and whosoever could catch them, had them to their own behoof.” But still, when the homage was to be paid, the usual question arose. The English lawyers and statesmen demanded an unconditional homage for the realm of Scotland. The Scotch persisted in limiting it to “the lands their king held of king Edward in England.” No quarrel ensued; the question seems to have been postponed, for we find that three years after, Edward writes to the bishop of Wells, that “his beloved brother, the king of Scotland, had agreed to perform an unconditional homage at the ensuing feast of Michaelmas.” Alexander then appeared before the parliament at Westminster, and offered his homage in these words: “I, Alexander, king of Scotland, do acknowledge myself the liegeman of my lord Edward, king of England, against all his enemies.”

This Edward accepted;[41] and it is abundantly evident that, as the two brothers‐in‐law had no intention of quarrelling, the real point in dispute—the allegiance claimed “for the realm of Scotland”—was left undecided—Edward not conceding, Alexander not admitting, the alleged rights of the English crown.

This position of postponement, declining to bring the matter to a quarrel, continued during the whole of Alexander’s life. Edward and he remained in amity; but Edward in this and all other disputed questions, always used the reservation—”saving the rights of my crown;” i.e., “whatever properly belongs to the king of England, that I do not concede.”

In 1261 a daughter had been born to Alexander of Scotland in the castle of Windsor, and in due time this daughter was married to Eric, king of Norway. Her brother, the only surviving son of Alexander, was also married, about the same time, to a daughter of the count of Flanders. But the lapse of a few years saw the removal of almost the whole family by death. Margaret, Alexander’s wife and Edward’s sister, died in 1274, her son in 1282 or 1283, and her daughter, the queen of Norway, in the following year. Alexander himself was killed by a fall from his horse in 1286; and thus the only successor to his house remaining was the young princess, his daughter’s child, who was styled “the maiden of Norway.”

When Alexander suffered the loss of both his children in 1283–4, a meeting of the estates of the realm was held at Scone, at which meeting the succession was declared to belong to “the maiden of Norway.” When, two years later, the unexpected calamity of Alexander’s own death occurred, another meeting was held, and recourse was had to Edward, whose niece, the late queen of Norway, had been the young maiden’s mother. He was in Gascony at the time, and he contented himself with counselling the Scotch to choose a regency, and to carry on the government in the young queen’s name. The intelligence does not seem to have hastened his return from the continent, which did not take place until two or three years afterward.[42]

A council or parliament was accordingly held at Scone on the 11th of April, 1286, at which a regency, consisting of six “guardians of the realm,” was appointed. The persons chosen were, the bishop of St. Andrew’s, the earl of Fife, the earl of Buchan, the bishop of Glasgow, the lord of Badenoch, and James, the steward of Scotland.

But in the absence of any visible sovereign, it was not surprising that the Bruces, and Baliols, and other families which claimed to be in the line of succession, should draw together, consult, and form confederacies, having in view the contingency which afterwards did actually arise—that the young “maiden of Norway” might die before she could ascend the throne. These rivalries and confederacies increased, and the parties strove with each other, until, at length, as the historian of Scotland confesses, “open war broke out between the adherents of Baliol and Bruce; and, for two years after the death of the king, continued its ravages in the country.”

Such was the state of affairs during the last portion of Edward’s stay on the continent; and assuredly, for this sad predicament of Scotland, he was in no way answerable. But the natural and inevitable consequence was, that so soon as he arrived in England, he was compelled, by appeals directed to him from all sides, to begin to concern himself with the troubles of that kingdom. Sir Francis Palgrave has shown, by a reference to the original documents, that such appeals were addressed to him by the earl of Mar, by Robert Bruce, lord of Annandale, and by a body called “the seven earls of Scotland.” These parties all “appealed to the king of England and his royal crown.” So invoked, the king invited them to send commissioners to meet him at Salisbury in November, 1289, there to treat of “certain matters of import;” and to which meeting the king of Norway would also send an ambassador of his own. The Scotch readily acceded to his proposal, and they sent to this meeting at Salisbury the bishop of St. Andrew’s, the bishop of Glasgow, Robert Bruce, and John Comyn.